In his latest book, Vintage Lighting (Amherst Media, 128 pages, $34.95; ISBN-13: 978-1-60895-221-2), pro photographer Christopher Grey shows how to capture the lighting techniques of bygone eras with today’s cameras, light sources and postproduction tools. Spanning the period 1910 through 1970, from Edwardian through “Hollywood” to Pop and the Sixties, he shows in imagery and text how to recreate the many lighting styles, poses and props this exciting period in portraiture produced, finishing up with some digital processing techniques to help you enhance your images even more. In this excerpt, we look at his take on the Edwardian Era.—Editor
Digital opens visual doors, and John Neel walks through many of them in his new book, Rethinking Digital Photography. This 240-page book is filled with ideas and experiments that encompass both historic film approaches and leading-edge software techniques, including how-to building guides for gadgets and hybrid imaging devices, using odd and wonderful software to build unique images and adapting items such as toy camera lenses into your work. In all, it’s a great visual workout and idea book that breaks out of the traditional digital how-to book mold. In this excerpt, Neel takes us through techniques combining panoramic shooting and using software filters to create “planets.”—Editor
The Gemini kit is composed of two flash heads (monoblocs) and a Gemini Battery
set, as well as a strong duffle-bag like carrying case and stands for the heads.
We worked with the 500WS heads, although the kit comes in both 250WS and 750WS
units as well. The supplied stands come with an "L" bracket that
all...
One technique to expand the dynamic range potential of an image, in other words, to overcome contrast problems, is to make a number of exposures at different settings of the same scene and combine them later to pull the best out of each exposure.Ther...
We recently returned from the 2006 PMA Convention and Trade Show in Orlando,
FL--the largest annual international trade show in our industry. With over
600 exhibitors, 20,000 attendees, and more than 200 educational sessions, this
four-day event is pretty much a "must...
Researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have used stained glass as the inspiration to develop a unique method of creating sharp, full-spectrum color images at 100,000 dots per inch (dpi) without the need for inks or dyes. In comparison, existing industrial inkjet and laserjet printers only achieve 10,000 dpi, while research-grade methods can only dispense dyes for single-color images.
Can Anyone Make a Camera Here in the Good Ol’ USA?
Can you name the last camera made here in the USA? I have been at this game for a while and am hard pressed to come up with an answer. You might think it was a Kodak, but they gave up the work years...
After you buy a good camera that allows you to change lenses, it will become obvious to you that it is not the camera that enables you to be creative in photography. It is the lenses. The features on your camera, like fast auto focus, a large LCD screen, accurate Metering modes, and various custom functions are all important, but it is the lenses that have everything to do with the artistry of the images you take.
When industry mavens put on their thinking caps in an attempt to gauge the
future direction of the photographic industry, they typically start by analyzing
trends in camera sales. Then they quantify the resulting data into various demographic
segments and product categories. In that regard,t...
Most “serious” photographers own at least one pocket-size digital camera so that they’re always prepared to capture an interesting scene—even if their trusty SLR is back home in the camera cabinet. That means many of us go about ourdaily...
For the past few years we’ve watched the popularity of camera phones grow exponentially, as devices on the Android and Apple iOS platforms have offered more and more features, higher resolution cameras, and the ability to download a myriad of both free and paid apps of interest to photographers and the general consumer.
Think of a digital camera as a microprocessor with a lens. Along with doing all the things a camera does there is an immense amount of image processing that goes on inside before the image is recorded on the memory card. There are many ways to change the character of an image using the camera’s processor.
Ten years ago PBS debuted a moving documentary entitled “American Photography: A
Century of Images.” The program traced photography’s profound influence upon life in
America, and I recall being particularly struck by thecamera&rsqu...
The III also sports a new Raw option, dubbed sRAW, which is 2.5 megapixels
in size and half the file size of "regular" Raw images. The advantage,
claims Canon, is that sRAW images can be processed just like any Raw image but
stored in at a smaller size. This is perfect, they say, for wedding candid photographers
who want Raw post-exposurepr...